Sonia Burton arrived to her job at a bingo hall in Northumberland when she starting having pain in her chest.
Before she could do anything about it, Burton had collapsed on the floor. That’s when her brother, Mark, received a call while walking the dog on what he thought was going to be a normal day.
Burton had a heart attack. Mark rushed to the scene and found his sister being attended to by paramedics; he said he saw no life left in his sister but begged the medical responders not to stop CPR.
When Burton first went down, her boss, Karen Arkle, began resuscitation and called an ambulance, which arrived within four minutes and took over.
For the next 56 minutes, the paramedic, Jason Riches, and first responder Gary French, did CPR on Burton.
She had no pulse and wasn’t breathing -- which in technical terms means that Burton was dead.
However, everyone refused to give up, even Burton’s late husband, who had passed away of a heart attack himself twelve years prior at the age of 37.
“The only thing I remember is my late husband coming to me and saying, ‘It’s not your time, Sonia, go back to the children.’ Then I woke up in the hospital,” Burton said, recalling a visit she had from her late husband as she was in the state of limbo between life and death.
Once the ambulance arrived at the hospital, Burton was still unconscious but had started breathing again.
She was then transferred to a different hospital where doctors performed a lifesaving surgery by putting a stent in her heart.
Eight days following the incident, Burton went home to her four children and brother.
“It’s strange to think I was technically dead for an hour,” Burton said. “If it wasn’t for the guys being there so quickly and not giving up on me, it would have been a very different story. My mind is a bit forgetful and I’m on a lot of medication, but otherwise I’m doing really well -- and, at the end of the day, I’m still here.”
Since her recovery, Burton has had the chance to reunite with the team who saved her life.
“ I couldn’t be more thankful for everything Stephen, Jason, and Gary did for Sonia that day,” Burton’s brother Mark said about the emergency responders. “To see Sonia like she was that day and to see her now is phenomenal. I can’t express just what a good job they’ve done.”
Two paramedics who responded to Burton’s heart attack, Jason and Stephen, have over 50 years of combined experience in the field. But, neither of them had seen a miracle quite like Burton, who came back to life after a length of time the paramedics had never seen before.
“We often get a return of a pulse, maybe one out of 10, but it’s just the adrenaline that’s making the heart work again and as soon as that wears off they go back into cardiac arrest,” Stephen said.
You go into this job to help people,” Jason added. “It’s a nice feeling knowing that we were able to make a difference and even better to see what a remarkable recovery she’s made.”
